He is one of the few people who needs no introduction in Hispanic families. Everyone feels like they’ve been standing in the living room every Saturday for years. He is Don Francisco, born Mario Luis Kreutzberger (Talca, 1940) in a rural area in central-south Chile. The famous presenter of Sábado Gigante, on the air for 53 years – between 1962 and 2015 – lives in Miami and travels through Santiago de Chile for various engagements. A fundamental one: November 10-11 will see the 34th edition of Telethon, a charity he founded that has been raising funds for children and young people with motor disabilities since 1978. He’s left the first line of the telethon, but he’s not giving it up. The company is present in 14 cities in Chile, has expanded to 12 Latin American countries and will soon add Argentina.
It’s Friday afternoon, October 6th, at Teletón Santiago headquarters and Don Francisco looks enviably fresh. He’s had a busy day, but he welcomes EL PAÍS with perfect make-up for the photos and is happy to talk despite his nap. The meeting point is a modern center with an area of 20,000 square meters, where 297,989 care and 794 operations were carried out last year alone. It is the pride of Mario, perhaps the most popular living Chilean in the world. As a racist communicator, he reveals a secret during complex interviews: unsettling the interviewee.
Questions. Can you give me an example?
Answer. With President Barack Obama up for re-election. I told him that I had interviewed him in 2008: “And then you had all black hair. And now he no longer has black hair, only white hair,” I told him. It wasn’t on their radar. And then you enter another field.
Q I don’t want to imitate his technique—that would be necessary—but here we go: His hands catch my attention. They belong to a young man.
R. They hadn’t told me. But otherwise I think I represent my age faithfully. I don’t feel old, but when I see myself, for example on the screen, I am surprised.
Q What do you think of this world in 2023?
R. This is a different world. It is a different world than the one I lived in, which has changed very quickly. I started in traditional television and to make an analogy, since I am also a model technician, I could say that on television I went from being a tailor who not only cut clothes but also sewed them to being a tailor-made suits . through computers. From one extreme to the other! Imagine if I had started with black and white television.
Q And do you watch TV?
R. I see everything. I’m very interested in news, CNN, Fox. I watch the news in English and Spanish.
Q Do you like the TV that is being manufactured today?
R. I have followed the history of things and what often happens is that one does not realize how violent changes are taking place. Nowadays everyone can have a television channel at home. And you get used to these profound changes. Now imagine with artificial intelligence. Recently I asked artificial intelligence for an interview.
Q And what happened?
R. She asked herself and answered herself. And it turned out much better than any I have given before! An interview conducted by a machine with my image and voice, without me providing my image or voice.
Don Francisco at the Telethon Institute in Santiago de Chile.FERNANDA REQUENA
Q Does it surprise you, scare you, worry you?
R. None of the above. I think that this needs to be clarified: there has to come a time when there is balance in people, otherwise people will remain unemployed. Like when robotic surgery began. People thought: No more surgeons. But no: surgeons perform robotic surgery, albeit with a robot. So I don’t know how this is supposed to balance out. Although we cannot foresee, we must be ready to live in the new world. At almost 82 years old, I live in the world of 22 years old. To try to live it.
Q I don’t perceive him as nostalgic, but rather as interested and open.
R. If I’m nostalgic, I wouldn’t be able to do anything I do today. It would have to be in the past. Even in what was eaten. I come from the time when nothing was packed and everything was done with a poruña (small shovel). Even the oil was taken from a barrel. But I can’t stay there. There are things that improve as life goes on. When I was born, the average life expectancy was 49 years. Today in Chile there are 82. So I have a lot of love.
Q Are you thinking about death?
R. Of course often. The closer the years come, the more you think about death. He thinks about death with his fellow human beings, with his partner. It is not always the case that both people leave at the same time. And another time, because you have to share that with your children and grandchildren.
Q What worries you at 82 years old?
R. To answer this question, I guess I have to use a sentence, even if I don’t particularly like it: Everything used to be better. This time there are limitations, physical and mental, and some advantages: you no longer have the torment you had before.
Q And what sorrow might the successful Don Francisco have had?
R. The fear of doing better, of moving forward. Things that didn’t work out that you wanted to do differently. Today you no longer have certain fears, but you realize that you are losing things. For me, for example, it was an honor, something fantastic in my life, to have had the opportunity to take part in the telethon. But two years ago I had to step down and it was painful. Step aside so that it has a future, because the telethon needs another 45 years. For example, if I could, I would like to do the same thing on TV as before, but I can’t. You have to recognize it.
Q Did it hurt you to leave television?
R. I left Sábado Gigante in 2015 very happy and proud to have completed a stage. As I left the other channel [Univisión]I wasn’t so happy there because I knew my cycle would be different from then on. To tell people the truth and not tell them: I’m happy, I take care of sheep and I have a beehive. No, that is not true. I like what I do, I have a passion.
Q Is that age?
R. It’s the time. Life has an end date. We will only live for a short time and we will be dead forever.
Q Speaking of time, one of your children gave you an empty bottle with a piece of paper in it for Christmas.
R. I had to remove the paper with a needle. And it said: Time. He said to me: “You, Dad, have everything but time.” Fortunately, you are not born with knowledge. He learns all his life.
Q Are you devoting time to your family now?
R. Not much more than before.
Q Oh really?
R. The thing is: I’m a workaholic, a guy who has to work. I should work. I need to be scheduled during the day. I can’t say: tomorrow I’ll get up and have lunch whenever I’m hungry. I need a daily calendar. When I don’t work I feel useless.
Don Francisco hosted the show “Sábado Gigante” for 53 years.FERNANDA REQUENA
Q You don’t stop.
R. I do a documentary, I do a show on Sundays for CNN en Español called Reflexiones, I do medical shows that are shown on different channels. Personally: I exercise every day and walk 10,000 steps every day. I’m also launching a podcast in December called “What’s the Public Saying?”
Q It is his unforgettable sentence in Sábado Gigante. What will it be about?
R. I wrote “Between Sword and Television” 20 years ago. It is a decalogue of the things that I believe enabled me to get where I did. In each episode of the podcast, I will explore each point in half an hour. The first will be endurance.
Q You have three children and the majority of your grandchildren and great-grandchildren are women. Women living in a new era of fighting machismo.
R. And it seems very good to me. This corresponds to the progress of society.
Q A lot of machismo on TV before?
R. We were sexists because we were born sexists. My grandchildren are completely different because they were not born sexist. We belonged to a sexist society and behaved like sexists and adapted to the times. What is happening now seems very fair to me.
Q How do you think you have adapted?
R. I have adapted to most of the changes. There are not so serious things, but jokes and things that used to be done are not done anymore because it is not appropriate.
Q They live in Miami and have decided never to travel to Cuba. Because?
R. It’s the only country I don’t know. And I didn’t go to Cuba because there’s a very large Cuban community in Miami that has its own problems and needs, and I never wanted to influence that. I have never been politically active. Not here, not there, not in the United States, not in Cuba or anywhere else. Now I haven’t had a chance, but I would like to see Cuba. I think I know it better than any other country without having been there. I know her from hundreds of stories. My dream was to one day travel to Cuba with 10 people who left the country 50 years ago and return to the places where they were children, where they went to school, where they had their first kiss.. .
Q Sounds really good.
R. I would like to do it, but I don’t know if I can do it.
Q You say you have never been politically active, but a few years ago you criticized Donald Trump’s attitude towards Latino immigrants in the US.
R. There I didn’t consider myself a politician, but rather an immigrant. I am the son of an immigrant and I am an immigrant. But I didn’t just discuss it with Trump, who I couldn’t interview. I have interviewed several US presidents and candidates and asked them all the same question: When will the problem of undocumented immigrants be solved? The answer was always “yes, yes, yes,” but it was never resolved.
Q Let’s move on to Chile. Four years ago, on the occasion of the social outbreak of October 18, 2019, you cried on a television program. Because?
R. I found everything that happened very painful. But I didn’t think it was a political act, but a human act in the sense that what happened to this country was painful. How did we get out of this situation? Things burned, people fought. I have been through many of these situations. When the first telethon was launched in 1978, the country was ideologically bankrupt and on the brink of armed conflict with Argentina.
Q Not everyone found the 2019 outbreak painful.
R. It seemed to me that this could end very badly, with people dying. It worried me. You can’t overcome your feelings.
Don Francisco poses for a photo at the Teletón Institute.FERNANDA REQUENA
Q How would you like to be remembered?
R. I am very proud of the telethon. As for the legacy, I never thought I would leave it. I know that in these 60 years my wife has saved everything that was given to me, from a button. She has built a museum and we are in talks with the Catholic University of Chile to keep it there. It will become a reality this year or next.
Q Soon!
R. Soon. With humility and pride, I have earned all the accolades that can be given to a man on television. A man born in Talca with a star on the Hollywood Walk? You never expect that.